Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to improving the range of sensor systems. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for increasing the range of sensor systems for measuring voltage and current using a redundant sensor system configuration.
Background of Related Art
There are two common types of energy-based methods that are used to treat tissue: microwave surgery and electrosurgery. Both methods involve the application of high-frequency energy to cut or modify biological tissue by using an electrosurgical generator (also referred to as a power supply or waveform generator) that generates an alternating current (AC), which is applied to a patient's tissue through the active electrode or an antenna and is returned to the electrosurgical generator through the return electrode.
During energy-based treatments, the voltage and current waveforms of the electrosurgical energy generated by the electrosurgical generator are sensed by voltage and current sensors. The sensed voltage and current are sampled by analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to obtain samples of the sensed voltage and current. A digital signal processor of the electrosurgical generator processes the samples to obtain voltage, current, power, and impedance measurements of the tissue being treated. The magnitudes of the voltage and current waveforms are then controlled based on one or more of these measurements and a desired power curve suitable for a particular electrosurgical procedure.
Electrosurgical generators typically include a redundant sensor system in addition to a main sensor system to ensure that the measurements of the main sensor system are accurate. The redundant sensor system is often used to periodically verify the measurements obtained by the main sensor system. In general, the main and redundant sensor systems include measurement circuitry, which inherently has a range of measurement values that it can reliably measure.
For example, the range of the measurement circuitry may be lower than the range of the voltages or currents to be measured. To address this issue, the measurement circuitry may offer different settings, e.g., high and low range settings. For the low range setting, the measurement circuitry readings are accurate over a low range of voltages or currents but not over a high range of voltages or currents. For the high range setting, the measurement circuitry readings are accurate over a high range of voltages and currents but not over a low range of voltages and currents. Thus, the range settings of the measurement circuitry need to be changed based on the measured voltage and current values.